Greywater- from Laundry to Landscape

i am a newbie and your content is interesting and informative thanks for sharing

The general principle of cycling nutrients in our landscape makes so much sense. I wish it were a common practice everywhere. Here Tim Barker, teaching the PDC, talks about nutrient cycling.

I don't find that soap nuts alone get the job done, so I use half the amount of recommended laundry soap and about 7 soap nuts (we have hard water). I use a laundry soap from Azure Standard that I'm okay with putting on our alkaline soil as greywater - shrubs and trees are still alive and when the weather isn't too hellish, thriving even!

Dale Hodgins wrote:  Bananas consume lots of water and nutrient. I lived in a home where all grey water was channeled to a spot where bananas grow.  

Exactly what I do. The outflow of our washing machine goes to a strip of land beside the house where bananas are planted. All leaf cuttings are chopped and dropped. I also add grass clippings from the neighbouring grass farmers to cover any bare soil.

Recently, Yahoo mail threatened me with bad stuff if I couldn't
keep my mail below 20GB.

So lots of pruning and many old links in interesting mail are now 404.
So the internet is not exactly forever.

By good fortune some are still active.

Let me introduce you to Alosha Lynov .

A Russian who was living in South Africa where there is always water rationing
and then went back to Russia where he fell on hard times for a bit.

Anyway, by chance I discovered this old email  and these videos mentioned
inside are worth watching. In spite of water shortage, he recycles enough water
to run a shower and a swimming pool.

It is best if he explains it himself:

water3

water1

water2

Academy of BioArchitecture

I read both hs books and fell in love with the whole grey water idea. I live in Lanzarote where there is very little rain. Luckily we have a garage under our house so I was able to cut through all the grey water pipes (not blackwater obviously) and reroute them outside to the garden. The shower water feeds a kiwi, avocado and the raspberries - basically, all plants needing water on a daily basis.
Next I hacked into the washing machine water. Unfortunately our washing machine is in the garage, under the house so I lengthened the outlet hose until it reached outside the garage and could drain into a 100 lt tank with a sump.
When it fills, the sump sends the water to the highest part of the garden, where the water flows out through various small outlets, all onto day lillies. It then soaks away downwards towards banana trees, mandarin trees etc,  the day lillies have survived fine with the soapy water falling on them for several years now and brighten up the garden with their beautiful flowers.
Finally I put the kitchen waste water pipe first through a fat separator, then through a 2m long ditch/swale filled with gravel. The gravel is full of worms so when the water exits, it is also full of fertilizer from the worms. This water leads out onto the topmost part of the garden too, and constantly drips down onto the plants below.
These systems have made me love washing up and doing the washing because every time I do I know I'm watering the garden at the same time. I love that feeling of killing two birds with one stone.

Genevieve Lisa Pearson Coleman wrote:I read both hs books and fell in love with the whole grey water idea. I live in Lanzarote where there is very little rain. Luckily we have a garage under our house so I was able to cut through all the grey water pipes (not blackwater obviously) and reroute them outside to the garden. The shower water feeds a kiwi, avocado and the raspberries - basically, all plants needing water on a daily basis.
Next I hacked into the washing machine water. Unfortunately our washing machine is in the garage, under the house so I lengthened the outlet hose until it reached outside the garage and could drain into a 100 lt tank with a sump.
When it fills, the sump sends the water to the highest part of the garden, where the water flows out through various small outlets, all onto day lillies. It then soaks away downwards towards banana trees, mandarin trees etc,  the day lillies have survived fine with the soapy water falling on them for several years now and brighten up the garden with their beautiful flowers.
Finally I put the kitchen waste water pipe first through a fat separator, then through a 2m long ditch/swale filled with gravel. The gravel is full of worms so when the water exits, it is also full of fertilizer from the worms. This water leads out onto the topmost part of the garden too, and constantly drips down onto the plants below.
These systems have made me love washing up and doing the washing because every time I do I know I'm watering the garden at the same time. I love that feeling of killing two birds with one stone.

This makes me want to do laundry more often too 😅 what a clever way to make chores actually rewarding.